Recently, the development of a self-checkout terminal having various interfaces in order to allow a customer to complete payment of articles by himself or herself is under way. In the case of carrying out payment using a terminal of this type, a customer as an operator causes a barcode scanner provided on the terminal to read a barcode attached to an article and thus inputs an article code. On the terminal side, the price is calculated based on the inputted article code and the calculated price is displayed on a display unit. The customer pays the price displayed on the display unit by cash, card, electronic money or the like, using an interface for payment of price, and complete a series of payment processes.
In the case of payment for articles using the self-checkout terminal, a measure needs to be taken to limit articles which the customer can take home to articles whose article codes are inputted already, in order to prevent unauthorized acts. An example of such measure is checking the weight of articles whose article codes are inputted already. That is, the weight of an article whose article code is inputted already is measured, and this weight is compared with the weight of the same article specified in a FLU (price lookup) file or like, based on the article code. When the two weights are not identical, this situation is regarded as a weighing error. When a weighing error is generated, an error message and guidance on an error cancellation method are displayed on a display unit and so on, thus notifying the customer of the generation of the weighing error.
When the weighing error is generated by weight check as described above, the operator of the self-checkout terminal may input the next article code without noticing the error message displayed on the display unit. In this case, it is difficult for the operator who notices the weighing error to confirm which article this weighing error is about.
Also, in an ordinary checkout system where a clerk operates a POS (point of sales) terminal or the like to complete a series of payment processes, despite failure to read correctly an article code attached to an article, the next article code may be inputted. In such case, the clerk does not understand which article's barcode fails to be read correctly and it takes time to cope with this situation. Therefore, the payment is delayed. Moreover, the customer has to wait, which can damage the impression of the store.